GAT t4's in Charleston, SC

[Jesse Driggers]

I played GAT at the monthly t1 in Charleston.  Prize's were
1st:  Unl.  Ancestral
2nd: 4 foil Wastelands
3rd/4th: pick of $20 or 3 revised Savannahs...

I don't really care for long intros, especially since nothing of note happened anyway.  also, i'll only go into real detail if something noteworthy happened.

there were 18 in attendance, decks were as follows:

2: Voids     Billiy(Jebus) + Faye
3: GAT       Me, Nick, Gohan
2: Sligh      Bill(White Trash), New guy...
2: Urb Trix  Chub, Jon(Gilthanos01)
1: OSE'ish   John(e2theipi)
4: Keeper    Dave(Carbon), Cullen(Zombie Shakespeare), Mark,
                 Darren(Zelif)
1: Ducktape Hill(Hrot)
1: GW Jareth/Masticore New guy...
1: Dreams    Homer
1: Bridges    Matt

My List

4 Quirion Dryad
4 Psychatog
4 Brainstorm
3 Sleight of Hand
4 Gush
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Misdirection
2 Counterspell
2 Cunning Wish
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Fastbond
2 Merchant Scroll
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Regrowth

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Library of Alexandria

Side
3 Submerge
3 Smother
1 Ebony Charm
3 Naturalize
1 Berserk
2 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Steely Resolve

1: I only have 2 Misdirections.  should be 2 Daze 3 Misdirection.

2: Steely Resolve was very good vs 2 keepers and a sligh.  these were the only matches it was relevant.  I hate using wishes to get naturalize every time an abyss drops, so these are sort of proactive naturalizes.  also nullifies swords and sometimes REB.  Smother/submerge in the mirror, trike/core, burn.  

The Resolves proved their worth to me, so I am going to keep them for the time being.
 
Round 1:  Billy with Void...
damn...
game 1: He owns me
out
2 wish
2 scroll
1 yawg will
1 daze

i sided out will b/c it is relativly hard to get off vs void.

game 2: he duress/voids...

0-1-0, 0-2-0

Round 2:  Jon, Trix
yay.
game 1:  His deck only has 4 fow to deal with anything, so i go off after a couple counters and draw.

out
1 vamp
2 scroll

in
3 naturalize
I'm not sure if he went transformational(I hope not, a resolved suicide Morphling owns tog)
game 2:
I drop a tog and beat for 1, he drops a Illusions. I naturalize during my turn, go off on him with like 2 fow and a misd.

1-1-0, 2-2-0

Round 3, Bill with Goblin Sligh.
YAY
game 1:  he plays small goblins and get me down to 7, i drop tog and win.

out
1 vamp
1 mystical
1 fastbond
2 wish

in
2 steely resolve
3 smother

game 2
I drop a turn 1 steely resolve on dryad, turn 2 dryad, turn 3 dryad, make em 5/5s, he taps out and I walk for the win.

2-1-0, 4-2-0

round 4, Darren Keeper
game 1: we trade counters, he ends up balancing and drops a abyss. scoop(I had no hand, 1 land, and only like 2 forces in my deck for counters)

out
1 vamp
1 mystical
2 daze
2 wish

in
2 steely resolve
3 naturalize
1 berserk

game 2:  I get out a fast Steely resolve on Atogs, resolve Atogs, he sided out wishes and Enchantment hate.  I go off (without berserk of course.)

game 3: I drop a resolve on dryad, and make it large.  he resolves a cop black to neuter a tog, and a moat.  I draw naturalizex2 and a regrowth.

3-1-0, 6-3-0

Round 5, Hill with Ducktape.
ID. Ducktape is about my least favorite match.  I'd rather face TnT with Void than play Ducktape at all.  sucks the fun out of the game.

t8, not in order
1: Cullen keeper
2: Billy Void
3: Faye Void
4: Me GAT
5: Gohan GAT
6: Mark Keeper
7: Hill Ducktape
8: ? ?

I get mark and keeper
game 1:  I lose to a mistake.  I attack with a nonlethal tog, and do only 3 points, trying to play around swords.  he ends at 1 life.  If I had attacked for 5 like usual he would not of stabalized of a search land.

out
1 Vamp
1 Mystical
3 Daze

in
2 steely resolve
3 naturalize

game 2:
he goes for suicide morphling, which scares the hell out of me.  I have the counter, and he doesn't??(he might of but i won the war so..)  I go off soon after, tog crushes for 28(zorb life).

game 3:  
steely naming dryad, fast 5/5 and time walk.  I countered like every spell but 1.

t4
billy with void.


game 1:  i drop a 1st turn dryad with daze back up.  I get it to 10/10 ish and win.  I now realize the only way to win this match.

out/in see round 1

game 2: he has a broken hand. i have no hand and no perms by t3.

game 3:  see game 2 with a void added.


oh well, I knew my bad matches, and I addressed one of them(keeper) now to get void in check...billy ends up beating Hill in the finals

Props
1: Billy.  I only lost to the winner, so it's cool.
2: Hill.  For playing the most boring deck and not castrating
           yourself by r3.
3: Void. for putting both its players in the t8.
4: Dave: For running the tournament.
5: Trogdor.  I drew Trogdor on my arm and it owned my opponets, except for billy who has a trogdor t=shirt.
6: Billy's sister.  quite possibly the hottest jail bait EVER.

slops.
1: Homer.  quote of the day.

"your side board should be random in color cards that you could't fit in your deck"  

billy in response "actually, your side should help strengthen your bad matches."  

homer " but my deck has trouble with most other decks..."

homer plays underworld dreams/ornithopter tech.  phage is a beast lol.

[ertaitheflip]

Keep Gro alive my brother!

By the way....um..quick question..How did you berserk your tog against Darren when you had the resolve out? Or did you berserk a dryad....

[Gilthanas01]

Jesse, nice quick report. I'll fill out your only gap, which was the other deck in the T8. That was me, with Urb Trix. Cullen and I played another epic 2 hour match before he edged me out..........

[Jebus]

I'll see if I can throw a report together later, although I don't remember many of the details of most of my matches other than "Ritual, Duress, Hymn".

[Jesse Driggers]

Kris, notice the part that says "without berserk of course."  I was well above lethal without the berserk.

Sorry I forgot you jon, but I was playing a long match vs mark, and missed seeing you.  I still think it's funny that you always get matched with Cullen.  Oh well, losing to a good player is alright.

[Gilthanas01]

Yeah, I think from now on I'll have to rig the pairings so he and I can just do our inevitable showdown in the 1st round. Later in the day it's just too much of a fuckin' headache. At least now he's running Keeper, I actually LIKE playing vs Keeper. It's much worse when he runs Parfait, I'd rather visit a deaf, dumb, and blind dentist to have a root canal done than face Cullen Cox with Parfait...............

[Hrot]

Quote (Fishhead @ April 09 2003,15:27)

My chief discoveries were the Goblin Lackey is very good against DuckTape, especially if you only draw Spheres of Resistance instead of Smokestacks or Tangle Wires.    My other loss was to MonoB, though it looked like its a generally pretty favorable matchup for DuckTape.  I also discovered that people get frustrated when you smash all their permenants, so its not a "friendly" deck to play.

-b

Hey.

  Overall, I was pretty happy with the deck, as I've been running mainly TnT (various builds, but mostly G/r/u) for the past couple of months. So running a combo deck that happens to abuse welders and workshop seemed like a nice change.  After seeing the Dulmen decklists, I knew it was possible.

  I'd been messing around with the idea of a Tangle Wire / Smokestack deck for a while, recently a U/r version that abused Welders and tried to combo as soon as possible, and earlier a Mono Blue/brown version, with lots of draw (no counter) and search (Tinker, Transmute Artifact), along with the standard Trikes, Jugs and Su-chi's, but it died a horrible death to Null Rod, so I let it lie for a while.  I had seen the Spheres of Resistance before, but I had never added them to the main before this past weekend.

  Two weeks ago, I placed 2nd in one of our bi-monthly tourneys, loosing to Gro/Tog despite having some of the Toronto tech main (Bouncer main, Gilded Drake -> SB), so I knew I'd be facing it again up in Charleston.  I didn't actually change my deck until about 3 mins before the tourney started though - I was trading into a signed beta lotus, and a signed beta Pearl.  (Which took up a bit of my concentration.    Here's what I ended up with:

2 Meditate (these used to be Time Vaults)
1 Stroke/Genius (remnants of my older deck)
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
1 Time Twister
1 Wheel/Fortune
1 YawgWill
1 Memory Jar

2 Juggernaut (quick kill under a soft lock, and another threat...)
1 Triskeleion
1 Karn
4 Goblin Welder

4 Sphere/Resistance
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire

7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Grim Monolith
1 Metalworker (these guys are good for one (really broken) turn, unless you play a draw-7...)

1 Tolarian Academy
2 Ancient Tomb (leftovers, but they worked surprisingly well)
4 Mishra's Workshop

4 Volcanic Island
2 Shivan Reef
1 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta

1 Strip Mine
2 Wastelands
----------------
3 Fire/Ice
3 Su-chi
1 Masticore
4 Red Blast
2 Shattering Pulse (I couldn't scrounge Rack+Ruin, and besides, mana isn't usually a problem)
2 Forcefield (Just for Gro/Tog...  I'm actually looking for one more  



-----------------
-1 Stroke of Genius
+1 Windfall  (this would've been generally more useful all day)
-----------------


  It treated me very nicely, I went 5-2-1 (ID'ing the last swiss round).  I had just added the 4x Spheres to the deck, and I didn't know just how powerful dropping one on the first turn really is, in a fully powered environment.  (I chalk that up to inexperience with this particular form of the deck.)

  I beat up on two Keepers, Trix, one NetherVoid (sorry Faye), unpowered GAT, loosing in the swiss to a very broken Gro/tog (he didn't stay that lucky) and to a Void deck in the finals.  In testing though, you're right - A first-turn Goblin Lackey owns this deck, barring a Smokestack. A Goblin Vandal wasn't very nice either.  (I played some very quick games vs. GobboSligh between rounds - The Sideboard would've helped...  3x Su-Chi 1x 'Core, 3x Fire/Ice)

  The Juggernauts main were there for a quick kill in our control/aggro-control dominated environment.  They were also left over from my older deck.  In retrospect, the YawgWill should've been a Balance, with the duallands and fetchies changing respectively.  I only abused Will once, and it was a game that I'd already won.

  Vs. GAT: +3 Red Blasts, +2 Forcefield, -Stroke, -Wheel/Fortune, -Memory Jar, -1 Meditate, -Metalworker.  I'm not sure if this was the best, but it seemed to work out ok...  :-/

  Vs. Keeper: +4 Red Blasts, -Tinker, -Memory Jar, -Stroke, -Meditate.  (I think that's how I did it.  I know I brought in 4x Blasts...)

  I pulled in 3x Fire/Ice and 3x Su-Chi for my Void matchup, taking out one of each: Stroke, Tinker, Jar, Meditate, Wasteland, and Metalworker.  I'm not sure that's the best SB plan, but I hadn't tested it at all, and it's the best that I came up with  (to go aggro-combo, instead of pure combo).  In both of my matches vs. Void, they went to 3 games, with the player who went first winning in each game (kinda spooky...)  I again agree that the disruption that MonoB offers can pose a real problem, barring an opening Sphere.  

  In my last game (game 3 of the finals) I made too many mistakes.  First, I kept my opening hand, which didn't have either a Smokestack or a Sphere.  What I had was: Sapphire, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Volcanic Island, Welder, Fire/Ice and Meditate.  I thought it would be a neat trick to drop my hand and Meditate on my first turn.  I did, and drew into another Mox, Mana Crypt, Su-Chi, and Strip Mine.  I dropped the Su-Chi and passed the turn.  His first turn (he's got two coming...) is:  Swamp, Ritual, Duress (fire/ice), Powder Keg, Lotus -> Hypnotic Specter.  2nd Turn:  Counter on the Keg -> blow it up (Sol Ring + Welder), Edict (su-chi), swing with Hippie.  Ugh.  I should've sent the hand back, as impressive as it was.

  Oh well, other than not really knowing how the deck ran with Spheres, I was pretty happy.  I like the combo a lot, but I'm going to experiment with the deck.  I'd like to fit in too many cards: 2 Time Vaults, Mystical Tutor, Balance, another Karn (he's really good), the second Metalworker (I'm still undecided on them...), possibly a Lotus Petal (both for the first turn plays, and to have another art. to weld back in, for the early 'Wires, or a Smokestack that gets out of hand), maybe a Masticore (both to help problem matchups, and to enable Welders earlier), and I'd like to up the Fetchland count.  The idea of having white as a splashed color is appealing (balance, StoP, PeaceKeeper, hell even Allay if Parfait ever shows it's face around here again).   The uber-drawing of Psyduck's latest version is appealing, but I'm not sure if it fits my playstyle.  More testing is needed.

  Sorry, I've written a damn book.  I been thinking about how to push this deck over the top for the better part of a week now, and I guess it just spilled out.  

-Hill

[ertaitheflip]

Ergh...Sorry bout that, it was 7 in the morining when i read that, so i saw berserk and resolve in the same paragraph and was confused.

[Jebus]

If I recall correctly, the person who won in our finals match did not always go first.

I believe you went first game one, and got the win.  Then I went first game two for the win.  Then game three, you went first with the Meditate, giving me two free turns with a broken hand sealing the win.

It was a good game though.  Always a challenge to go up against your pesky Workshop decks.